Quote:
Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan
I'll admit I'm confused by the statement that the Alberta Party, who came within 800 votes of winning Elbow, are in "big trouble" but the NDP, who continue to barely register in Calgary, are not.
I'll agree that the Liberals are in deep trouble, but that is kind of the message to to take away from the Elbow results too. The liberals and AP together would have won that riding, by a tidy margin, but the Grits can't exactly claim that the AP, who got more than twice as many votes as they did, are "splitting the vote."
Elections are partly about expectations. Given that, the winners to me tonight are the Tories, who did much better than expected, and the Alberta Party, who despite barely registering in province-wide polling came much closer than I would have thought in a riding where the fundamentals don't favour them.
The losers: the Wild Rose, who under performed expectations again, and the Liberals, who appear to be fading into irrelevance.
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I agree that the Liberals are in big trouble, but there are a few reasons why the Alberta Party had a terrible night as well. They threw everything they had at Elbow and lost. The leader ran a hard campaign and had been campaigning for the past two years, in his second attempt, and it wasn't enough. The other Alberta Party candidates were complete non-factors. There is no traction there aside from them pulling out all the stops and the thing is in a general election it's a different animal.
The loss for them is worse because while none of the opposition won seats, they're all going to be invited to the televised debate in the next campaign. They're all likely to be listed on every opinion poll and of course donors will still donate. Those are big deals for a fledgling party.
I do think something has to happen for centrists. The issue is whether that happens through some cooperation and putting aside the extremely minor differences, or it happens under Prentice.